the Chambers
whom he may summon to Rheims in his suite, the magistrates who shall
swell his cortege, the soldiers who shall surround his person, will
feel the faith of religion and royalty strengthened in them by this
imposing solemnity. Charles VII. created knights at his coronation; the
first Christian King of the French, at his received baptism with four
thousand of his companions in arms. In the same way Charles X. will at
his coronation create more than one knight of the cause of legitimacy,
and more than one Frenchman will there receive the baptism of fidelity."

Charles X. had no hesitation. This crowned representative of the union
of the throne and the altar did not comprehend royalty without
coronation. Not to receive the holy unction would have been for him a
case of conscience, a sort of sacrilege. In opening the session of the
Chambers in the Hall of the Guards at the Louvre, December 22d, 1824,
he announced, amid general approval, the grand solemnity that was to
take place at Rheims in the course of the following year. "I wish," he
said, "the ceremony of my coronation to close the first session of my
reign. You will attend, gentlemen, this august ceremony. There,
prostrate at the foot of the same altar where Clovis received the holy
unction, and in the presence of Him who judges peoples and kings, I
shall renew the oath to maintain and to cause to be respected the
institutions established by my brother; I shall thank Divine Providence
for having deigned to use me to repair the last misfortunes of my
people, and I shall pray Him to continue to protect this beautiful
France that I am proud to govern."

If Napoleon, amid sceptical soldiers, former conventionnels, and former
regicides, had easily secured the adoption of the idea of his
coronation at Notre-Dame, by so much the more easy was it for Charles
X. to obtain the adoption, by royalist France, of the project of his
coronation at Rheims. "The King saw in this act," said Lamartine, "a
real sacrament for the crown, the people a ceremony that carried its
imagination back to the pomps of the past, politicians a concession to
the court of Rome, claiming the investiture of kings, and a denial in
fact of the principle, not formulated but latent since 1789, of the
sovereignty of the people. But as a rule, there was no vehement
discussion of an act generally considered as belonging to the etiquette
of royalty, without importance for or against the institutions of